The Inconvenient German
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Willi Geismeier is proving to be a headache for the Nazis yet again as leader of the Flower Gang - a secret organisation helping people flee Germany. But is his cover about to be blown?
1944. Captain Charlie Herder's plane is shot down in woods near Munich. A week later, he has managed to evade capture by the SS, but for how much longer? As the American pilot desperately tries to make his way to the French border, a huge manhunt ensues.
Former Munich police detective Willi Geismeier is still proving to be a thorn in the side of the Gestapo in his new incarnation as leader of the Flower Gang, a flourishing network of secret operatives helping Jews and others escape Germany. But a catastrophe occurs when the gang's plan to help Charlie is compromised, and Willi faces a race against time to work out how their scheme was derailed if he and his operatives are to stand a chance of surviving the war . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Steiner's solid third Willi Geismeier mystery (after 2021's The Constant Man), the former Munich cop is now a key player for a secret organization that helps people escape Nazi Germany. In 1944, Geismeier's operation to get American pilot Charlie Herder, shot down near Munich, into France goes awry when its cover is blown, and Herder and a guide are killed as they make their way to the border. Geismeier tries to track down the murderers for months and is still on the case when the war ends and he returns to police work. Finally, he zeroes in on a shady Nazi collaborator who, like many wartime criminals, dabbled in an assortment of dark undertakings while maintaining a veneer of respectability. The fine descriptions of life in the resistance movement and the details of day-to-day existence for most Germans under Nazi rule make up for some jerky storytelling and subplots that do nothing to enhance the main story line. Steiner also skillfully takes a wider lens in portraying the bleak, often lawless landscape Germans faced in the ruins after the war. Fans of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther will want to take a look.
